


ZSL

by mharris



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, Gratuitous commas, The Arrangement, Zoo shenanigans, crowley being stressed out, deep sarcasm, working lunches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 12:36:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17725334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mharris/pseuds/mharris
Summary: "Crowley had been extra dodgy recently. He had been avoiding habitual haunting grounds, disappearing for days at a time, and disturbing Aziraphale at odd hours of the day and night.  So when came the time for their regular meeting, Crowley suggested they meet somewhere besides one of their usual spots."





	ZSL

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to my beta reader who yelled at me about commas, and also to my own Aziraphale who when I said "Give me a prompt right now" she said "I dunno, the zoo?"

“The dark in this place makes me itch,” Crowley said, hands shoved in his pockets and shoulders raised up.

Crowley had been extra dodgy recently. He had been avoiding habitual haunting grounds, disappearing for days at a time, and disturbing Aziraphale at odd hours of the day and night. So when came the time for their regular meeting, Crowley suggested they meet somewhere besides one of their usual spots.

“They have to keep it that way for the fish, fishes?” Aziraphale said. “They’re used to the deep sea, with little light.”

“Good for them,” Crowley said.

“You wanted to come here,” Aziraphale said.

“You suggested it.”

Irritated, Aziraphale had suggested the zoo. Crowley, who had not realized Aziraphale had picked up the subtle human art of passive aggressiveness, agreed without question. Aziraphale, who knew how to be not only passive aggressive but also spiteful, didn’t dissuade him. 

“You accepted.”

Which was how they came to be standing side by side in the aquarium of the London Zoo, staring each other down in silence. Crowley snorted and motioned to walk away. Aziraphale followed, but watched the fish as they passed. 

Crowley watched the people. And several shadows. 

“Let’s get it over with, what’s your report?” Crowley said.

“Managed to convince a pentagram wearing youth to try church again, does that count?” Aziraphale said. “Beautiful things, yeah?”

“Goths?” Crowley said, then realized Aziraphale was watching several fish chase each other through kelp. “Oh, fish, yeah.”

“I feel as if you’re not really enjoying yourself, Crowley,” Aziraphale said. But there was a tone of amusement in his voice that Crowley missed.

“Darkened hallways with no clear exits are my favorite thing, Aziraphale, of course I’m enjoying myself,” Crowley said. Sarcasm was a subtle human art that both of them knew very well.

“Don’t be a baby, Crowley,” Aziraphale said. He watched Crowley watch the crowds instead of the fish for a few moments before continuing, “We can go outside then, I just thought inside would be better because less chance of people over hearing us.”

Crowley’s shoulders shook as he shivered. Aziraphale rolled his eyes and turned them down a hallway where an exit sign was pointing. 

“I’ve also gotten three new churches built,” Aziraphale continued as they walked, “and an old one torn down. I thought it was something you’d rather like, and you hadn’t been around for a while, so I went ahead and took initiative.”

“You’re responsible for that old church coming down on, what was it,” Crowley shielded his eyes as they entered the light of the outdoors, “Albany? Fountain of Faith?” 

“Well of Faith, dear,” Aziraphale said, patting his arm. “No one had used it since the 70’s anyway. There was a push to revitalize it but, it was not to be.”

Crowley scoffed, “What, they want to put in an antiques shop instead?”

“No,” Aziraphale said.

There was a weighty pause. 

“It’s part of a parcel of land that’s going to become a new food hub,” he said.

Crowley turned to Aziraphale quickly, “The owner of that Armenian place we like said they were expanding soon, do you think that’s where—“

“I have it on good faith that’s exactly where their new shop is going to be,” Aziraphale said.

“Ooh,” Crowley said, sucking in a breath of air. “I’d love to have a Nina’s on that side of town.”

Aziraphale nodded. “That’s what you always say, so, the church had to go. It’s what you would do.”

Crowley rubbed his nose absently. “Huh, you’re right. Keeping in the spirit.”

“Want to go into the reptile house?” Aziraphale pointed toward the large sandstone enclosure. 

“For what?” Crowley said. “I’ve done my time.”

Crowley scowled at the building as they passed it, and Aziraphale chuckled. 

“I think it would be very fitting to watch you get into a fist fight with one of those giant iguanas.”

“Oh you’d love that,” Crowley said, shoving his hands deeper into his pockets. “Let’s go look at the tigers.”

The pair of them turned down a pathway lined with jungle and stuffed with birds. Aziraphale watched the birds walking slowly through the shallows of a pond and pointedly ignored Crowley watching the shadows. 

“What have you been getting up to then?” Aziraphale asked. “What’s your report look like?”

“I’ve been doing some work online,” Crowley said, looking over his shoulder.

“Oh?” Aziraphale said. “Like a blog?”

Aziraphale had a blog. Not that he’d every tell anyone, except maybe someone else who also had a blog.

“No,” Crowley said. “Twitter.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said knowingly.

Crowley pointed a finger at him, “So you know it.”

“You’re a part of that?”

“A small, but very influential part,” Crowley said, a bit defensively.

“It doesn’t seem very fun.”

“It’s not about fun, it’s about chaos,” Crowley said enthusiastically. “Can you imagine? Being able to say something online and it reach millions of people instantly? The potential for misuse is astronomical. People don’t need the goading and tempting to do bad things when they’re online, they just do them.”

This was the first time Crowley seemed to be really involved in the conversation, so Aziraphale didn’t try to stop him. The tiger enclosure came into view, and groups of onlookers crowded too close to the fence, so the two of them stood off to the side to watch tigers mill about on trees and in the shade.

“Plus,” Crowley steamrolled, “I’ve gotten a bite off by getting adverts integrated right into the timelines, and that was some hard bit of finagling I helped with there. But it’s so worth it, advertising is the best tool the Lord of Darkness himself has. There’s an infinite world of possibility here.”

“Quite a project,” Aziraphale said. “Is… is that it?”

“Is that—” Crowley sighed. “You and hell on that one.”

“What?”

“I got Rosario’s bakery shut down,” Crowley interjected.

Aziraphale turned and looked at Crowley indignantly. “That place with the fantastic apple turnovers?”

“The owner was embezzling money!” It was Crowley’s turn to be indignant. “I thought you’d approve.”

Aziraphale made a face. Crowley tossed up his hands and went back to watching the tigers.

“I like tigers, they know what they’re doing,” Crowley said after a stretch of time.

Aziraphale cocked his head to the side and watched one of the tigers plop themself down in the dirt. “They’re cats.”

“They’re big cats,” Crowley countered.

“Doesn’t mean anything, they’re cats, just bigger.”

“Oh that’s nonsense.”

“Give a tiger a box, it’ll sit in it just the same, you watch.”

“But the instincts, the predator’s instincts, makes them more wary. More cautious, more deadly.”

“If you make a hamster big enough it’d be right scary too, have you seen those teeth? All cats are the same.”

“Pedantics.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes, though Crowley couldn’t see it. “Do you want to go see the gibbons?” Aziraphale suggested.

Crowley turned to him, “What in the blazes are gibbons?”

“They’re a monkey,” Aziraphale said with a frown. “How do you not know this?”

“Why would I need to know what a gibbon is?”

“You were there the day God named every animal.”

“And there were quite a number of them, I stopped paying attention through the middle bit.”

“How do you—“

Crowley cut his hand through the air, “Are you saying you did pay attention? To everything? Do you know the name of every animal?”

Aziraphale had the grace to look nonplussed. “Sure.”

Crowley cast around, then pointed at an animal in an enclosure at the end of the path. “Then what’s that one there?”

Aziraphale looked over, then turned back to Crowley, “That’s a tapir,” he said.

Crowley looked over at the animal, then back at Aziraphale. “You only know that because there’s a sign there.”

Aziraphale shrugged, “Part of heaven’s ineffable wisdom is to not turn away from the things that are given to you.”

“And to not turn away from pastries given to you?” Crowley lifted an eyebrow.

“They were good turnovers, Crowley,” Aziraphale said stiffly.

“The owner was embezzling money,” Crowley said. “From his staff.”

“I’m never going to find someone who does scones like those again.”

“What if I stole the recipe and gave it to a little old lady trying to do good in her community or something?”

“Get her a shop and I’ll consider forgiving you.”

“Heaven’s mercy.”

Crowley rolled his eyes, though Aziraphale couldn’t see behind his shades. 

“There’s a restaurant near the entrance if you want to get lunch,” Aziraphale said. “Haven’t closed that one down yet have you?”

“Considering it.” Crowley shrugged.

The restaurant was a wide, open sort of place with too many windows that made Crowley uncomfortable. But the menu was good, and the curry was excellent, and there was a new season of The Great British Bake Off to talk about, so the two of them whiled away the time and Crowley stopped looking out of the corners of his eyes for shadows. 

Aziraphale sipped at his drink through the clear plastic straw. “You’ve relaxed.”

“Have I?” Crowley said, then immediately sat up.

Aziraphale sighed, and chewed his straw. “Knew I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Crowley put his elbows on the table and leaned closer to Aziraphale, “Listen,” Crowley said, then said nothing afterwards.

Aziraphale resisted rolling his eyes again, and instead concentrated on his cup as he drank. The liquid traveling through the straw went from clear to wine red. Aziraphale drank deeply and gazed off into the middle distance. He put the now full paper cup back on the table.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong, or are you just going to act cagey for the rest of time?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley, hunched over the table, scowled. He leaned a little further, and Aziraphale eyed his tie getting closer to his empty curry plate. 

“I got a notice,” he said.

Aziraphale waited for him to elaborate. 

“From down below.”

Aziraphale picked up his cup of wine again.

The notice had been a voice coming through his speakers as he listened to a podcast in the shower. Listening to Jesse Thorn reprimand him for not tempting enough do gooders made his water and his blood run cold.

“I’m not doing enough demonic activity. Apparently hell doesn’t count misdeeds done online. They’re not going to take the work I’ve put into trolling on forums, so in their eyes I’m doing nothing.” Crowley snorted. “As if years of building Twitter bots is nothing.”

“Oh I can blame you for those?” Aziraphale said.

“You’re on Twitter?”

“Who isn’t?”

“Hell, apparently. Look,” Crowley leaned further, and Aziraphale stared as Crowley’s tie finally made contact with the leftover curry. “They said they’d be watching me. So I’ve been watching out for them.” 

Aziraphale put down his cup.

“I know how it sounds, a little crazy, sure, a lot paranoid, yes, but this is hell we’re talking about here. I’m going to cut them off at the pass.”

“Have you seen anyone following you?” Aziraphale asked.

“Yes.”

Aziraphale nodded. “Would they happen to look like those two suspiciously nondescript gentlemen at the table over there by the door?”

Aziraphale nodded to a place over Crowley’s shoulder.

Crowley turned to look briefly, dragging his tie through rice. He looked back at Aziraphale, considerably more pale than he had been before. 

“Why didn’t you mention that before?” Crowley hissed, then actually hissed.

“How was I supposed to know?” Aziraphale said, picking up his wine cup again.

Crowley gave him a flat look over the rim of his sunglasses.

“Time to go,” Crowley said, and stood stiffly.

Very carefully and without acknowledging the two men behind them, he smoothed out his suit jacket and tie, which smeared the curry and rice stuck there. Crowley held out his hand and looked down at his tie with disgust, then up at Aziraphale. Aziraphale, still sitting, finished off his wine with a loud, dragged out slurp through his straw. He set the cup down and stood up.

“I wish you had been a little more clear about this from the start,” Aziraphale said, waving his hand vaguely in Crowley’s direction. The curry disappeared. “It would have made things a little easier, I think.”

Crowley snorted, “Forgive me for not divulging my deepest fears in a zoo. Maybe the tapirs were agents of the devil.”

“You might be onto something, but for entirely different reasons. After you my dear?”

The two dumped their trays and left the restaurant, pointedly ignoring the pair of men that were pointedly not watching them leave. The exit was through a gift shop, and stepping into the myriad of aisles of key chains and stuffed flamingos did little to ease Crowley’s worry.

“Have you tried, say, confronting them?” Aziraphale said, pushing aside a lurid blue sweatshirt with a retro print on the front. 

Crowley was too busy looking for his pursuers in the mirror next to the sunglasses rack to hear Aziraphale.

“Huh?” he asked, head swiveling for better views in the tiny mirror. “What? Wait, what? No, why would I do that? Have you ever met a demon?”

Aziraphale gave him the up and down.

“No I mean like, a good, God-fearing demon.”

“You don’t—“

“I fear nothing. I’m dead inside.”

“You are actively fearing the people following you, right now.”

Crowley abandoned his sunglasses mirror to turn to Aziraphale. “I know very precisely what demons do to other demons. I’m not afraid, I’m disgusted.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes.

“Ah,” Aziraphale said, and stepped behind the rack of sweaters.

Crowley slid between the large and extra large on the rack without even bothering to look at what Aziraphale had seen.

“They followed us, didn’t they?” Crowley said, voice muffled by the fabric. 

Aziraphale peeked around the clothing. They looked like two regular, normal, human men in what passed for business casual khakis and striped polo shirts. They didn’t look demonic at all. One was balding, even. If not for the way their eyes seemed sharper than most as they scanned the store, they wouldn’t have stood out in the slightest.

“Are you absolutely sure they’re demons?” Aziraphale asked the rack of sweaters.

“Of course!” the sweaters replied angrily, ruffling a little bit. “Who else would be following me?”

“I’m just pointing out,” Aziraphale said, “I’ve seen demons try to look like humans, your lot do not do very well at it.”

“I do just fine, thank you.”

“Crowley dear, your eyes.”

The sweater rack was silent a moment.

“Fair point.”

Aziraphale turned back to watch the two men walk casually through the shop, and then right out the exit.

“They’re gone.”

Crowley poked his head out of the sweaters. “Where?”

Aziraphale pointed toward the exit.

“Well, we can’t go that way then.”

Crowley snaked out of the rack, spotted an employee only corridor, and made his way toward it. Aziraphale caught up with him as he stepped into the corridor where the light was considerably dimmer than in the main store. 

“I ought to leave you here, you know,” Aziraphale said.

“Then go,” Crowley said. “I’ve been doing this for weeks.”

“No wonder you’ve been so dodgy,” Aziraphale huffed.

“Yeah, now you get it.”

Crowley spotted the exit at the end of the hall, and raised his eyebrows at Aziraphale in a triumphant sort of way. Crowley disabled the alarm connected to the door with a wave of his hand, and tossed the door open. It emptied out into a small employee parking lot, in the middle of which stood two human looking men in business casual khakis.

“Oh, blazes,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow.

One of the men stepped forward, with his arms crossed in a very menacing fashion.

“Mr. A. J. Crowley? We have a few questions for you,” he said.

“And I have explanations a plenty,” Crowley said. “Would you like to hear them or would a written statement work better for the higher ups?”

The other man stepped forward, this one with his hands clasped in front of him in a very menacing fashion. “Let’s just start with the easy stu—“

“Wait,” Crowley said suddenly, putting his hands up. “What did you call me?”

The two men looked at each other, then back at Crowley, “A. J. Crowley, located on Sloane Street, you drive a 1926 Bentley with—“

But Crowley had stopped listening. He turned to Aziraphale, hands still raised, and hellish smile on his mouth. Aziraphale looked back at him, eyebrows raised into his hairline, lips bitten into a thin line.

“You hear that, Angel?” Crowley said, his voice dripping. “They’re looking for an A. J. Crowley.”

Aziraphale knew what Crowley meant. Never once had down below acknowledged his chosen name, he was still Crawly to every manner of demon, hell beast, and spawn of darkness. These men, for better or probably worse, were not demons. Which meant they were, in fact, just normal humans. Humans who had been making one very clever demon, very stressed out, for a very long time.

Aziraphale turned his eyes heavenward and said a quick prayer. He turned his eyes then to the men in front of them. 

“Boys,” he said in a calm, but strained voice. “Who are you exactly?”

“Agent Smith and Agent Smithe from the National Fraud Authority,” arms crossed man said, uncrossing his arms. He reached into a pocket, presumably to retrieve an identification.

Aziraphale could see the stress working its way into Crowley’s face. In that brief moment, he could quite clearly picture Crowley surrounded by hellfire and holding a pitchfork. Aziraphale reached a hand out and put it on Crowley’s shoulder.

Agent Smith, or Smithe— it was hard to tell— flipped open a wallet to show a plastic card with his face on it.

“Mr. Crowley, we’ve been following you and investigating your suspicious spending activities for some time. You own a vintage car that is unregistered, live in an expensive apartment that isn’t on the books, frequent high end restaurants, and as far as our investigating has turned up, have no reported income.”

“This is what I get for taking you out for oysters last month,” Crowley said, gritting his teeth.

“Don’t hurt them,” Aziraphale said.

“If you put up resistance, sir, we will be forced to—“

Crowley put his hands up again, almost in a manner of surrender, but the action had caused Smith and Smithe to fall silent. 

“There is no force outside of hell that could make me care about whatever you’re about to say,” Crowley said, a hint of desperation in his upturned voice. “And you absolutely picked the wrong person to track. This doesn’t have to end terribly though, I can put you on my record books.”

Crowley snapped his fingers, and watched as the faces of Agent Smith and Agent Smithe went blank. 

“Don’t—“

“I’m not going to hurt them, Aziraphale,” Crowley said. “What do you take me for? Some run of the mill demon? No I have better plans for these two. Right now, you’re going to go back to your office and destroy everything you have about A. J. Crowley. Then you’re going to go about your lives and wait for me to call you. Because you belong to me now.”

Agent Smith and Agent Smithe nodded as one, and silently turned and walked away. The moment they disappeared around the corner, Crowley reached out for Aziraphale’s shoulder. He shook a little as he put his hand on his knees and braced himself, taking deep breaths, trying to steady himself. Aziraphale patted his back awkwardly.

“See now, if you had just talked to th—“

“Not now Angel,” Crowley said a bit breathlessly. “I’m going to go lay down for a week. We can pick this back up later.”

Aziraphale patted his back absently with the same grace and care as the sober friend in the bathroom with someone who’s had far past their limit.

“Anywhere you’d like, dear.”

**Author's Note:**

> First. ZSL is "the Zoological Society of London" which is the most british sounding name for a zoo possible, imo.
> 
> Second. There is a very thin slice of a three way venn diagram where Jesse Thorn's The Sound of Young America, Twitter's founding, and the starting seasons GBBO overlap, and that sliver is called 2011, which is where this story takes place. Thank you for your time, please come again.


End file.
